Half a million illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank use more water than the Palestinian population of over 2.4 million. Although the mountain aquifer in the OPT – lying under Palestinian land – is the sole water source for Palestinians, Israel uses 80 percent of it, leaving only the remaining 20 percent for the Palestinians.

The World Bank reports that the average Palestinian daily consumption of water is about 50 litres per person, well below the 100 litres recommended by the World Health Organisation. In contrast, the average Israeli settler uses almost 300 litres a day.

In case you were wondering, average daily consumption in South Africa is about 250 litres per person.

While it is true that Israel is selling Palestinians more water than it is obligated to in terms of the 1995 Oslo agreement, it is also true that Israel is preventing Palestinians from developing their own water networks and resources. Since 1967, Israel has not allowed Palestinians to drill a single new well in the western aquifer.

The Israeli Civil Administration (ICA), which controls 60 percent of the West Bank, requires Palestinian communities to apply for permits to extend water networks, drill boreholes and wells. Only 1.5 percent of permit applications were granted.

The ICA forbids the digging of cisterns for collecting rainwater.............

Desalination could solve crisis, but should it?

OPINION / 09 Jun '16, 1:28pm

Suraya Dadoo

Israel must not use South Africa's drought as a marketing opportunity to whitewash its crimes against the Palestinians, writes SURAYA DADOO

In a seemingly noble gesture, the Israeli embassy in South Africa cancelled its annual Independence Day celebrations this year, claiming to use that money to help South Africa find solutions to our water crisis.

A Palestinian boy collects water in Gaza in 2008. The writer warns that although Israel's innovations could relieve our drought-stricken land, we should not be blinded to what she calls that country's water crimes. Credit: AP

The products associated with Israel’s water triumphs were offered to South Africa’s public and private sector during SA-Israel Water Week, which kicked off in Joburg on Monday.

Israel is indeed a leader in water innovation and is promising to liberate us from the threats of drought and scarcity through drip irrigation, desalination and recycling.

But according to South African water expert Lorenzo Fioramonti, Israel is hiding its own water policies behind pseudo-technical discussions about water technology.

SA-Israel Water Week isn’t just about finding solutions to our water crisis. It’s also a public relations campaign to combat a growing awareness in South Africa about Israel’s subjugation of its Palestinian population. It’s about putting an innovative, technological, caring face to apartheid, occupation and siege.

There were huge disparities and inequities with respect to access to water in apartheid South Africa. Apartheid laws governing water in this country were shaped and developed by the needs and aspirations of white people, who enacted laws that served their domestic, agricultural and industrial needs. Israel’s water policies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) is reminiscent of these water policies.

Half a million illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank use more water than the Palestinian population of over 2.4 million. Although the mountain aquifer in the OPT – lying under Palestinian land – is the sole water source for Palestinians, Israel uses 80 percent of it, leaving only the remaining 20 percent for the Palestinians.

The World Bank reports that the average Palestinian daily consumption of water is about 50 litres per person, well below the 100 litres recommended by the World Health Organisation. In contrast, the average Israeli settler uses almost 300 litres a day.

In case you were wondering, average daily consumption in South Africa is about 250 litres per person.

While it is true that Israel is selling Palestinians more water than it is obligated to in terms of the 1995 Oslo agreement, it is also true that Israel is preventing Palestinians from developing their own water networks and resources. Since 1967, Israel has not allowed Palestinians to drill a single new well in the western aquifer.

The Israeli Civil Administration (ICA), which controls 60 percent of the West Bank, requires Palestinian communities to apply for permits to extend water networks, drill boreholes and wells. Only 1.5 percent of permit applications were granted.

The ICA forbids the digging of cisterns for collecting rainwater.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 85 percent of Israel’s domestic wastewater is recycled. Yet, the Israeli authorities have granted permits and security clearance for the construction and operation of just one wastewater treatment facility in the occupied West Bank.

In Gaza, the coastal aquifer is the only source of “freshwater” for 1.8 million Palestinians. The pollution and salinity levels of the aquifer are so high that 95 percent of its water is not fit for human consumption. Israeli authorities are preventing the entry of parts, chemicals and materials into Gaza urgently needed to desalinate the water.

So, while Israel promotes its desalination technology as a viable alternative for South Africa, it prevents Palestinians in Gaza from using this technology to solve its own water shortages.

These policies entrench Palestinian dependence on their Israeli occupiers for water, in the same way that South Africa’s Bantustans were completely dependent on the apartheid government for water. Should democratic South Africa be seeking water solutions with a regime that is emulating our apartheid regime by using water as a weapon to control a section of its population?

Israel is also not the only arid country with expertise to share with South Africa. All countries that have embarked and achieved successes in water management must be consulted to find long-term sustainable water solutions for South Africa.

Our discussions on South Africa’s water shortage must not be confined to technical issues as the Israeli embassy encourages. They must encompass human rights, social justice and governance innovation too.

South Africa’s water crisis must not be used as a marketing opportunity for Israel to whitewash its crimes against the Palestinians.

Suraya Dadoo is a spokeswoman for the National Coalition for Palestine (NC4P) and the co-author of Why Israel? The Anatomy of Zionist Apartheid: A South African Perspective

'The Way to the Spring' is a sobering look at Palestinian life and resistance in the West Bank

Palestinian protestors in the West Bank village of Niabi Saleh, with an Israeli settlement in the background. The town's struggles are part of Ben Ehrenreich's "The Way to the Spring." (ABBAS MOMANI / AFP-Getty)

Rayyan Al-Shawaf

The way to the spring…is blocked. At least that’s the case for the Palestinians of Nabi Saleh, a small village northwest of Ramallah. The expansion-minded residents of a nearby Jewish settlement, with the aid of the Israeli army that occupies the West Bank, have taken over the town’s water source, which Palestinian farmers depended on to irrigate their fields.

Ben Ehrenreich, an award-winning writer based in Los Angeles, discovered as much when he moved to the West Bank, which Israel captured from Jordan in a war with its Arab neighbors in 1967. Ehrenreich, who lived in that troubled land intermittently between 2011 and 2014 (in part, reporting for Harper’s and the New York Times Magazine), demonstrates that Nabi Saleh is no anomaly. “The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine” emerges as a sobering, iconoclastic “collection of stories about resistance, and about people who resist,” marred slightly by the author’s unwillingness to subject Palestinian militant activity, which has often included terrorism, to moral scrutiny.

“The spring is the face of the occupation,” Bassem Tamimi of Nabi Saleh tells the author. Every Friday, the villagers, joined by international and Israeli solidarity activists, march toward it in a regularized act of protest. “And every Friday Israeli soldiers beat them back with tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber-coated bullets,” observes the author. Afterward, groups of male youths situated some distance away hurl stones at the soldiers, who are generally beyond their reach.

Ben Ehrenreich and his book "The Way to the Spring" (Penguin Press)

Whether Ehrenreich accompanies Tamimi, an advocate of unarmed resistance who has come to the attention of the international media, or others – additional members of Nabi Saleh’s Tamimi clan, the beleaguered residents of what he memorably terms “Planet Hebron” or Palestinians in other areas – he witnesses the disturbing institutionalized discrimination and “casual violence” of an occupation now nearly half a century old. Those eager to dismiss Ehrenreich’s shocking anecdotes as selective would do well to take heed of the facts and figures that the author, like others before him, painstakingly cites to support his arguments.

Salam Tamimi, one of activist Bassem Tamimi's sons, at the sea in 2013. . (Ben Ehrenreich)

He explains that while Israel blockades (and sometimes bombs) one Palestinian territory, the Gaza Strip, it occupies the other, the West Bank, and employs two separate legal systems to govern its inhabitants. Israeli Jews who, in violation of international law, expropriate Palestinian land and build settlements in which Palestinians are (with rare exceptions) denied the right to reside, remain under the jurisdiction of Israeli civil courts, but Palestinians (excluding those of East Jerusalem) are subject to military rule. Acts of resistance real or imagined, peaceful or violent, directed at this state of affairs are almost inevitably punished. Ehrenreich notes that “in 2010, the last year for which records were made public, 99.74 percent of Palestinians tried in the military court system were convicted.” While languishing in that system, one might experience the highly euphemistic “moderate physical pressure” that Israeli law authorizes the Shin Bet (Shabak) security agency to mete out.

Ehrenreich's book includes photos he took while living in Palestine. (Ben Ehrenreich)

With time, the Jewish settlements have grown. (The roads connecting them to each other and to Israel proper – from which Palestinians are barred – have also multiplied.) As Ehrenreich notes, West Bank settlers now number more than 350,000, having “tripled since the beginning of the peace process in 1993.” (If one includes Israeli Jews who have moved into pre-existing and newly created neighborhoods in Occupied East Jerusalem, as Israeli watchdog B’Tselem does, the figure rises to more than half a million.) To make matters worse, Israel controls the water supply in the West Bank, diverting more of it to the settlers than the far more numerous Palestinian population. And all the while, the Jewish state refuses to grant building permits to Palestinians who live in or want to move to Area C, which takes up a whopping 61% of the West Bank and is directly under Israeli administration (meaning that the Palestinian Authority is clearly misnamed – it exercises no authority there).

There are a few problems with “The Way to the Spring.” All the resistance Ehrenreich documents in Nabi Saleh, Hebron and elsewhere is either nonviolent or potentially violent but in reality ineffectual (as with the youths throwing stones at heavily armed and armored soldiers). He acknowledges that Palestinians have resorted to violence and sometimes killed Israeli civilians, but he doesn’t linger on this issue or reveal his thoughts on the matter, despite the generally reflective nature of his writing. Where does Ehrenreich draw the line between armed resistance and terrorism?

Also, Ehrenreich seemingly adopts the reductive position that only Palestinians who resist the occupation deserve respect and sympathy. Toward Palestinians who shun resistance, either because they consider it futile or want to avoid arguably noble but perennially dangerous pursuits, he has nothing but scorn. This accounts for his fulminations against Rawabi, a pre-planned Palestinian city in the West Bank. There is much to criticize: The Palestinian Authority, which spearheaded the project, is corrupt and oppressive, the city caters to the middle and upper classes, and Israeli contracting firms benefit from its construction. Still, his description of Rawabi as “an extrusion in stone and glass . . . inhabitable scat deposited by capital on its way to a goal that excluded nearly everyone” is overly indignant and comically fustian.

These concerns aside, Ehrenreich deserves kudos for digging beneath the unsightly outer manifestations of the occupation to reveal its even uglier innards.

Parts of the separation wall near Bethelehem in the West Bank. (Abed Al Hashlamoun / EPA)

Consider the notorious separation barrier. Israel’s stated reason for building the wall, up to eight feet high in places, was to prevent West Bank Palestinians from carrying out terror attacks – including suicide bombings – within Israel during the Second Intifada (2000-05). That was conceptually sound. Yet instead of building it along the Green Line, the territory’s boundary, Israel constructed the barrier within the West Bank, strengthening its grip on the larger Jewish settlement blocs (which now lie on the Israeli side of the wall) and confiscating more Palestinian land, dividing villages in the process.

That wall is only a recent example of Israel’s continuous efforts to cement its control over the territory in question. “[W]hen the Israelis occupied the West Bank in 1967,” Ehrenreich writes, “they began to selectively apply certain Jordanian laws based in the Ottoman Land Code of 1858, which ruled that any acreage left uncultivated for three consecutive years…would revert to the state, which could transfer the land to private owners. Meaning settlers.” For decades, Israel has utilized such mechanisms to expand Jewish settlements while limiting Palestinian building density to specific areas.

Suleiman, a shepherd, in the West Bank village of Umm al-Kheir. Ehrenreich's book includes photos he took while writing about Palestine. (Ben Ehrenreich)

And so it goes. As a result, the generally bleak outlook pervading “The Way to the Spring” must count as its finest feature. This will strike some readers as counter-intuitive; after all, a book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is supposed to show us how tantalizingly close we are to resolving it, no? Yet the principled and blunt Ehrenreich won’t oblige. The only thing he’s optimistic about is continued Palestinian resistance, of the sort the villagers of Nabi Saleh and elsewhere undertake.

Otherwise, the way he assesses the import of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement in 2014 that “there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan” captures the thrust of this book, and the mood among many Palestinians. All of the West Bank, of course, lies west of the Jordan River. “In other words,” Ehrenreich writes, “the Palestinians would get no state. Ever. The occupation would not end.”

An Orthodox Christian reacts during a ritual baptism ceremony in the Jordan River at al-Maghtas site, Jan. 18, 2009. (photo by REUTERS/Paul Hanna)

Will Palestinian place where Jesus was baptized become World Heritage Site?

JERICHO, West Bank — Marah Khalil, a Christian woman from the northern West Bank town of Nablus, has always dreamed of baptizing her child where Jesus Christ was said to be baptized in the Jordan River. However, when she had her first and second son, the site was closed to the foreign and local Christian pilgrims for security reasons and she could not do so. By the time her third son Issa was born, she vowed to baptize him in al-Maghtas, or theBaptism Site in Jordan.

Summary⎙ Print Palestinians are seeking to register the western side of the Baptism Site on the Jordan River as a World Heritage Site.

Al-Maghtas is a sacred Christian site situated along the Jordan River near the Palestinian city of Jericho, where Jesus Christ was baptized by St. John the Baptist, according to the various gospels.

Khalil, who follows the Latin Church, told Al-Monitor that she got used to baptizing her children at the early age of three months but that she would delay the baptism of Issa until Epiphany (Three Kings' Day) to get the blessing of the place, which is considered one of the holiest places for Christians.

"All Christians in the world wish to have their children baptized in this river. As citizens of this country, we are lucky to have access to this blessing and the spiritual joy of visiting this place. It is enough to imagine that Jesus Christ was here," she said.

Khalil intends to visit al-Maghtas on Epiphany on Jan. 6, 2017, which is considered a main Christian feast after Christmas and New Year.

All Christians in Palestine and the world value this place spiritually. Archbishop Atallah Hanna of Sebastia said that this is the holy water that existed when Jesus Christ was baptized and where Christianity spread to the entire world.

"All Christian pilgrims seek to visit this place and receive the blessings of its holy water. We can almost assert that all people who visit Palestine visit this place," he told Al-Monitor.

Hanna said that the area where the site is located was completely closed by Israel for visits after it occupied the area in 1967, and monks were expelled under the pretext that it was classified as a military area. The monastery remained empty from 1967 until 1985, when monks were allowed to enter once a year on Epiphany. In 2011, it was opened to tourists and pilgrims.

In addition to its religious significance, the site holds great historical importance. For that reason, and despite international agreements, Israel refuses to hand it over to the Palestinians.

Iyad Hamdan, the head of the Ministry of Tourism office in Jericho, underlined the value of the site, saying, "Al-Maghtas is situated along the Jordan River and it is where John the Baptist baptized Jesus Christ. It is home to several churches and monasteries, including churches and other historical sites that are still being frequented and that are affiliated with the Greek Orthodox Church."

Hamdan noted that these churches and monasteries had been built in several spots in the late fourth and early fifth centuries near and around the Jordan River.

But they were initially built at the location where Jesus had been baptized. Hundreds of meters away, other churches, some of which were abandoned and others inhabited by clerics and hermits, were built during different times between the fifth and ninth centuries. Some were renovated during theCrusaders' occupation.

There are many churches along the borders to the east of Jerusalem Mountains in Hebron, all the way to Bani Na'im town in Hebron. Many desert monasteries were built in this region, and these monasteries served as shelters for hermits and monks who were escaping oppression and seeking protection for Christianity at the time.

Hanna Issa, the head of the Islamic-Christian Commission for the Support of Jerusalem and Holy Sites, said that the western side (Palestinian side) is where Jesus was baptized, and it is closest to Jericho.

The Jordan River is the boundary between Jordan and the West Bank, specifically in Jericho. After the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, Israel controlled the Palestinian part of the river and considered it a military border zone. The accurate location where Jesus was said to be baptized is yet to be determined. Hanna says that the western bank of the river is most likely the baptism site since it is the closest to the Galilee.

Hanna told Al-Monitor, "Until 2000, the place was an archaeological site. But after the pilgrimage of Pope John Paul II to the Holy Land in March 2000 and his declaring it a sacred pilgrimage site for Christians, al-Maghtas became largely visited by Christian pilgrims from across the world. Over 300,000 people visit it every year."

The UNESCO World Heritage Committee agreed on July 3, 2015, to include the eastern part of the site, which Jordan oversees in the World Heritage List under the name "Baptism Site." The western side is still under the Israeli occupation, but the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism is trying to have it registered as a touristic site on the World Heritage List.

Ahmad al-Rajoub, the official in charge of the World Heritage List at the Ministry of Tourism and Archaeology, noted that the file is ready to be processed for the inscription of the western side of al-Maghtas on the World Heritage Tentative List. It has been submitted to the World Heritage Center to be included on Palestine's tentative list.

Rajoub told Al-Monitor, "In July, there will be a vote on including the site on the tentative list, thus increasing the number of Palestinian sites on the World Heritage Tentative List to 14."

Israel is trying to register the place on the World Heritage Tentative List under the name "Qasr el-Yahud," but Hanna refuses this naming because it holds inaccurate political insinuations, since Israel is trying to give the place a Jewish character and claim that it reverts to it. "The correct religious and historical name is 'John the Baptist Monastery,' where John the Baptist Church is located," he said.

Hanna said, "We don't just refuse this naming. We condemn it because it tarnishes the sanctity and status of this place, which is Christian. We refuse the use of any terms that distort the holiness of the site."

Despite the political complexity of this place, its spiritual and religious value has made it a dream destination for every Christian in the world to extract the blessings of its holy water that touched Christ's body and the land he walked on.